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10 Second Roguelike

"Darkness has descended on Atalaria. A mighty Time Dragon has taken residence in the dungeon beneath the city and has warped the fabric of spacetime, causing the city's inhabitants to age at an accelerated rate.

You have been chosen to venture into the dungeon and face the dragon there. You will surely fail, but perhaps one of your descendants will succeed."

Who says that roguelikes all have to be slow-paced and strategic? For this entry, I've decided to mess with genre conventions with a roguelike that only gives each character 10 seconds of life. But fear not! Every time you die, you can get back where you left off with a new random character, a la Rogue Legacy. Can you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon and defeat the dragon?

I recommend using Chrome for the smoothest possible experience, but any modern browser should work.

Just for fun, I also made a Game Jam version of this game, which adds an infinite mode (with progressively higher difficulty) and lets you continue playing after completing the story, as well as featuring randomly generated character art (created by Jimmy Hack aka Humphihzly). Ignore the Game Jam version for rating purposes, but check it out if you're interested.

Didn't know you could just hold the arrow keys to move. I think I got carpal tunnel from mashing the keys. Really cool game! Reminds me of Rogue Legacy with the descendant system. I just wish that Damage varied a little bit more, and that there were items for you to get to boost base stats.

This game handles very well and is very well programmed. I think the idea sounds a lot cooler than it actually is in execution, however... the audio and the walking down the same long hallways time and time again get rather annoying after awhile. Good game in any case!

I think it has quite a few things going for it and I enjoyed it for the most part. I like the blend of turn-based decisions with the real-time-countdown. I don't think your choice on being strict with the definition of a roguelike in regard to the graphics was a good idea (especially after you even dropped permadeath). Having to read text in the corner of the screen to find out what's going on doesn't work too well in your game. This way it is I missed any tactical stuff you might have added and just ran around killing things until I found the exit (which would get old for me quite fast if the game didn't have the perfect length for this). What worked really well was how the last floor conveyed that it was special and the dragon was well identifiable as a boss.

The theme limits the enjoyability of this somewhat, as I ended up in a dungeon layout that took almost 10 seconds to reach the same point each time, with no alternative routes to make a shortcut with later turns. I like the idea though and have a soft spot for roguelikes.

@grayhaze: Oh, one small tip - if you're stuck on a dungeon level where the end seems too far away, go for characters with high Speed. Your Speed stat slows down time for you, enabling you to cross more of the dungeon before you die of old age (I should probably have explained this mechanic in the game).

I made it to the dragons lair! But the game became too slow in that room. holding an arrow key caused me to "skip" 20 turns and be dead.

I love the idea and when I started playing I had tons of fun!

I have two problems with this game though:
- Seconds vs Turns. Especially with the movement (hold a key or smash it 50 times), its realyl annoying that the game is in turns but the time in seconds doesnt match it at all.

- The EXP. In the dragons cave I was too low level.
In the ideal playthrough, you will play a hero until he levels and then wait for the timer to hit zero.
If you die, you waste all the exp you earned.
Very frustrating, as the button hold VS smash problem cost me several levels.

I slayed the dragon. Got a good laugh out of the concept and the game play was fun.

As for the music and sound. Woah. That was amazing. It sounds like something out of a commercial title. Excellent work. :)

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